PSYCHOLOGIST |SEXOLOGIST | EDUCATOR

Tag Archives: sexual rights

Dan Savage probably became my hero when he got the president of the United States to tell gay kids that things get better. I mean honestly the whole It Gets Better project was amazing, but that was a whole other kind of amazing. We’re certainly not where we have to be regarding LGBTQ rights, but that was such a powerful thing to happen.

I agree with Dan Savage a lot. Like, a lot.

(Fuck first! GGG!)

But not always.

It took me a little while to understand his position on cheating. I tend to be a bit too black-and-white when it comes to morality, and since lying and deception fall in my ‘bad’ category I’m a little bit unforgiving when it comes to cheating. I think consent is very important in intimate relationships, and having sex with other people without your partner knowing is just so disrespectful. Either let them know you intend to be non-monogamous, allowing them to break up with you if non-monogamy is not for them, or don’t sleep around. I really don’t think lying so you get to keep your relationship is an acceptable thing to do.

But Dan Savage has argued that sometimes, in some situations, cheating might be the lesser of two evils. If you and your partner are financially dependent on each other, or your partner is very ill and breaking up with them would mean they lose health insurance or housing, if there are extreme circumstances, sometimes maybe you need to do what you need to do to stay sane. I guess. I can see that sometimes cheating might be the best option in a collection of sucky options, so it’d still suck, but other options would suck more. I suppose. I’ve become a little bit more open-minded about that, sometimes the world is just not fair and there are no right choices.

And I also agree that, as a society, we’ve placed too much importance on sexual monogamy. Given the fact that a very, very large group of people cheat sometime in their life, perhaps we should take a bit more of a pragmatic attitude towards monogamy. It seems we’re not really good at it, generally. Many of us try, because we desire a monogamous relationship, but many of us fail. Dan Savage thinks we should look at monogamy the way we look at sobriety – it’s hard, sometimes you fall off the wagon, you get back on the wagon. If you only fall off once or twice in you life, you’re good at monogamy, not bad at it.

I guess.

I need this on my wall. So Much.

I don’t know. I’m not monogamous myself, but if I found out my partner had lied to me about such an intimate, personal aspect of our life, I would be devastated. Not because I care much about who he has sex with, but because honesty and respect are fundamental to our relationship. By violating that he would violate something that our whole relationship is based on, it would violate my trust.

When weighing different options, we should take the harm cheating causes into account. People who have been cheated on often feel traumatised, not because they feel sex is so important, but because their trust has been broken and one of the closest relationships in their life was affected. Our connections to others are so important, our attachments so central to our well-being, harming that harms a person in their core.

Losing a loving relationship hurts too, obviously. Being open about wanting to have sex with other people and finding out your partner does not want to be with you if that’s what you’re going to do, that hurts. But the harm you cause when you cheat and they find out is huge. We should not be too nonchalant about cheating in situations where the other options (not cheating, or being honest about wanting sex with others) are actual possible options.

So in this case? I completely disagree with San Savage. Instead, bring the subject up with your husband. Treat him like an adult you can talk to, an adult you can trust, an adult who has the right to make his own decisions about his life. Tell him “hey remember that fetish I have? I’d like to explore that, how do you feel about that?”. And he’ll tell you if he wants to know about it, if he’s okay with it, you can discuss a Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell agreement, or perhaps he’d like to set some boundaries on sexual acts. And if he simply rejects the whole idea and tells you no, well, then you’ll have to decide if cheating is the best of all options. But I think we owe it to each other to respect the trusting, loving relationships we have, and respect each other as adult human beings who get to decide, given all the facts, if they want to be in a relationship with you. Deceiving others into staying is not okay…

There’s only one group of people that would be harmed by full decriminalisation of sex work: human traffickers. Traffickers benefit from (partial) criminalisation because it creates opportunities for work for them. Take the Netherlands, for example. Helping people from outside the country find work in the Dutch sex industry is illegal, it’s in the law that you cannot do that. Women (and men) wishing to work here are allowed to do so, but anyone helping them in any way is breaking the law so no regular companies provide that service. This is amazing for traffickers and criminal organisations, who are making a lot of money assisting sex workers who need help getting started in the Netherlands. Because prostitutes are so dependent on these criminals this often leads to situations of exploitation.

It’s actually the biggest cause of trafficking in this country..

Imagine we decriminalise helping people from abroad work in the Dutch sex industry. Human traffickers would hate that, because it would open up the market place for good and reliable organisations to provide that service, it would decriminalise sex workers who help each other out, it would make it easier to sort things out yourself because it would no longer be illegal for friends or future employees to help find housing, get a ticket, get information. The opportunities for traffickers would decrease dramatically, and they’d hate it.

The tweet above is by a Dutch anti-prostitution activist and says “prostitution and human trafficking are not the same, but there are so many whorewalkers that there are not enough ‘free’ prostitutes for them”. Whorewalker is a derogatory term used by anti’s for clients of sex workers. But she’s right: the absolute best thing for human traffickers is if the market is cleared of voluntary prostitutes. The fewer independent workers, the more room for women in compromised situations that they can exploit!

Seriously though, complete decriminalisation and de-stigmatisation would be any trafficker’s nightmare. Clients of sex workers strongly prefer happy workers, the demand for bruised crying malnourished women is super-duper small, an increase of voluntary sex workers would pretty much wipe away their business. And if those sex workers would be able to pay for the services of regular accountants, regular workplaces, regular housing, regular security, well… traffickers don’t even want to think about that scenario.

Sometimes I wonder if the Dutch government is infiltrated by traffickers, they’re working so hard to maximise traffickers’ profits. They’re closing legal work places, decreasing licenced locations, increasing police brutality, disprespecting sex workers’ human rights, they’re doing everything to discourage women who have other choices and clearing the sector of ‘free’ prostitutes. It’s any trafficker’s dream.

But it’s probably not an infiltration of traffickers though. We already know from research that (partial) criminalisation is bad for prostitutes and increases exploitation. We already know criminalising clients makes life more dangerous for sex workers. We already know that trafficking thrives when prostitution is criminalised. I honestly believe that people who are criminalising sex work already know this: they support it because they think prostitutes should be punished and women should be stopped from having sex for money.

So please, if you think criminalising sex work would be a good idea, think hard who it would be helping. Would women with limited choices really be better off if another choice was taken away from them, or their safety compromised for other people’s moral battle? Would women who are being exploited truly benefit if the criminals exploiting them would be given the whole sex industry on a silver platter? Would clients who wish to pay for the services of a woman selling sex be better off if those women would be forced to leave the industry and hand it all over to traffickers? And who would be harmed if women who wish to sell sex would be free to do so without fear of police violence or discrimination by the state?

Headscarfs still cause a lot of debate in the Netherlands, some feel it’s a form of oppression and we shouldn’t allow it. I’ve always felt forcing women to undress themselves when they don’t want to would be far worse. Covering female breasts is a sexist cultural norm as well, but we don’t change that by stripping women naked against their consent. It is my body, and i have the right to show or cover it as I wish. And honestly, the tone of the debate makes me so angry sometimes I just want to cover my hair to make a point – I am not an object, I am not an idea or ideology, my body as a woman is not a political battle ground. This is my head, my hair, my breasts, and if I don’t want to show them to you, you have no right to see them.

I really can’t see this issue separate from sex workers’ rights and reproductive rights and women’s rights in general. The idea that as women we decide what we want to do with our own bodies seems so radical sometimes. Instead of allowing others to decide for us, as if we are children, we get to use our bodies as we please. Whether I want to cover my body, have sex for my own reasons including money, show my breasts in public or stay a virgin is my business and mine alone.

You’ve probably heard of Kesha, she’s an American singer and songwriter with a wild and kind of ‘raunchy’ image. Her lyrics are usually about partying, getting drunk and sex (“don’t be a little bitch with your chit chat, just show me where your dick’s at”) and it’s obvious that her image is constructed for her by her management. Young sexy women singing about rough sex just sells very, very well.

Kesha has now sued her producer for sexual and physical abuse, you can read some of the horrible details of her allegations here. I don’t think it comes as a surprise to anyone that young women in the music industry are vulnerable to abuse. Personally I believe fame is a damaging thing and would be worried if my child (or anyone I love) would become part of such an industry. But although many people are passionate about women in the media, and everyone knows that women in the music industry are more vulnerable to abuse from both management and customers, not a single person has proposed criminalising the industry.

“Heavy-handed restrictions on women would hurt women, not protect them. To make it illegal for women to be musicians and pop stars would be abusive and unfair in itself” says Noah Berlatsky in this great article. “Reducing violence against women shouldn’t come at the expense of cutting women off from professional opportunities and potential income. But sustained prejudices and stigma against sex workers prevent us from seeing that the same is true when talking about sex work.”

Yes, women in the sex industry are vulnerable to abuse. But just like marriage, the garment industry and the music industry, the answer is not to restrict women’s rights or criminalise marriage, buying clothes or listening to music. It’s actually stronger human rights and worker rights that combat abuse. The complete opposite of criminalisation.

Growing up in the Netherlands I got some relatively good sex education. Obviously there was a lot that needed improvement, it was mostly reproductive biology, and sexual diversity was just a paragraph in one chapter telling us that some people are gay and that’s fine too. Still, I remember when I was around 11 years old my teacher got pregnant and asked the class if anyone knew how that happened – nervous giggles everywhere of course, but we all already knew about the penis in the vagina and the sperm reaching the egg and all that. In secondary school we were taught about safer sex practices, that masturbation was normal (including a really, really awkward movie with a girl underneath a sheet touching herself) and what all the body parts were called.

We’ve improved a lot. Children as young as five get comprehensive sex ed, which now includes a lot of focus on consent, feelings, relationships and communication. I love this movie where they discuss what you can do when grandma wants to kiss you and you don’t want that.

But I think John Oliver of the Last Week Tonight Show did an even better job. “Lube is your friend… trust me”. Every child needs to see this!

The Dutch political party VVD is getting on board with sex workers rights! In Amsterdam they have proposed a new initiative to improve the freedom and independence of prostitutes and although I’m sure it’s not perfect, it’s obvious politicians are realising sex workers need rights, not rescue. I’ve been very happy with some other parties in the Netherlands too, D66 is being awesome, GroenLinks is doing well, it’s good.

Some quotes from the proposal:

Prostitutes, like other entrepreneurs, want a government that facilitates and supports them in their entrepreneurship.

Since the legalisation of prostitution, sex workers and proprietors deal with laws and regulations intended to combat abuses such as exploitation and forced work. These rules can be obstructive for prostitutes who work out of their free will. A recent poll by the Prostitution Information Centre shows sex workers don’t desire supervision from the city. These urges to control are being experienced as emotionally taxing, exaggerated and a violation of privacy. Focus on exploitation and forced prostitution is unnecessarily stigmatising for sex workers.

Closing windows does not contribute to a safe working environment for sex workers.

VVD believes people who want to work as prostitutes should be enabled to do so independently.

This is good stuff. The proposal is not perfect and the whole situation in the Netherlands is still a mess, but it really seems people are starting to get that sex workers need more rights, not fewer rights. The human trafficking hype is starting to crumble, evil rescue organisations are being seen for what they are, and although we often take steps back, in the long run we’re moving in the right direction.

It’s so frustrating sometimes when you’re dealing with real anti’s. When they lie about facts, when they accuse you of believing forced prostitution is fine, when they tell others you don’t even exist. Sometimes you just need to shut down the internet and let it go, or go full snark on some lying bastard who will gladly sacrifice sex workers’ well-being and safety for his own agenda. When you’re in the middle of (online) activism you get in contact with a lot of the most extreme whorehaters and anti-sex work activists.

So I think it’s important to remember.. we’re winning. Human rights are winning.

Getting into discussions with people who oppose sex workers’ rights can be absolutely draining. Most of us on the pro-side are sex workers or are close to sex workers, so these topics concern our own lives, our safety, the wellbeing of our loved ones. It causes an emotional reaction when something that basic is being attacked.

But not all prohibitionists, or ‘anti’s’, are alike. When I was younger I thought it was quite intuitive that a person can consent to commercial sex, and people around me generally seemed to believe that if a person really wanted to be a prostitute, more power to her. But I also believed, like the people around me, that very few women would want to have sex with ugly strangers. Surely most got into the business because they had no other choice. Like many people in my social circle I used to believe most whores needed help, financial or health-wise. The image I had was that of a drug-addicted sad person in a little unkempt flat. Except the few glamorous high-class escorts of course, whom intrigued me to no end. I used to believe most sex workers were of lower social-economic status which meant ‘my class’ had responsibilities to protect them. I used to believe that most sex workers preferred to get out of the business and would accept a nice little job with a cute little salary in a factory or in a service position if it were offered to them. Based on all these ideas I believed in a help-based approach, those few happy hookers we should leave alone, but healthcare and exit-programmes needed to be our first priority. Prostitutes were vulnerable women who needed our help.

Contact with actual sex workers challenged those arrogant assumptions like a motherfucker, obviously.

The biggest problem when talking to neutrals is a process called cognitive dissonance reduction. We all want to believe we are reasonable people who base their opinions on good information. So when we’re told our actions were based on lies and myths and actually harmed the people we meant to help, that causes cognitive dissonance: it conflicts with what we believe about ourselves. To reduce this dissonance we can do three things. We can change our first belief (“seems I’m not such a good, reasonable person after all”), reject the conflicting belief (“Everyone knows most whores are unhappy, you’re wrong”) or find a way to reconcile the two beliefs (“Even good, reasonable people are sometimes mistaken. I guess I was wrong”). The last option is a bit of a blow to our ego, it’s a very vulnerable thing to do. A non-hostile enviroment where you don’t feel personally attacked makes it a lot easier to admit your mistakes.

We’re told a lot of lies about sex, women and sex work. The idea of sex workers’ agency itself challenges some of our culture’s most basic beliefs. So naturally it causes a lot of resistance when those beliefs are brought into question, nobody likes to change their opinion on what they had always believed to be true. But at the same time we do process new information, and we are capable of changing our minds.

In contrast to the name, some neutrals can sound convincingly anti. They’ll repeat the lies and myths and advocate for harmful and discriminatory laws, they might be in favour of the Nordic Model or write horrible articles. But beneath all of that are no real convictions, it’s just fluff.

Neutrals benefit from correct information and contact with actual sex workers. My partner was a pro-leaning neutral when I met him, he had never met a sex worker and didn’t know too much about the subject. All it took was a little bit of information and some socialising with the sex workers in my social circle to turn him into a full-blown sex workers’ rights supporter. I talked to a devout young Christian woman a couple of months ago whose church donated to a rescue organisation. I made sure not to make her feel attacked as I punched her in the brain with information about trafficking, the rescue industry, sex workers’ rights and problems around prostitution, and she changed her mind. The same people who think Jojanneke’s deceitful documentary was insightful will also consider what actual sex workers have to say. That’s why visibility is so important, and why PROUD and many other organisations are doing such a fucking great job. Neutrals can be reached, they change their minds and become allies.

It’s no use trying to reason with Bad Guys, because they already understand. They know very well indeed that sex workers are harmed and only rights can stop the wrongs. They just don’t give a shit.

The Fetishists

Reading texts by certain anti-prostitution activists can become a bit awkward when you start to notice it reads like erotica. It’s common knowledge among psychologists and sexologists that many people get aroused by taboo subjects, sex isn’t just sweetness and light and roses. Some people find a healthy way to express these darker aspects of sexuality, kinksters for example are well-known for bringing these fantasies to the surface and acting on them in a consensual, conscious way. But when someone is taught not to recognise these urges, told sex should always be ‘making love’ and to deny any agressive, perverse sexual impulse they feel, it sometimes finds.. well, inappropriate ways of expression.

It’s important to note that all of us are a bit inappropriate when it comes to the suffering of others. There’s a reason why books and magazines so often describe rape, child abuse, assault and other forms of sexual violence in such a detailed and emotional way, readers seem to find it strangely pleasurable to feel horrified and want to know every dirty aspect of it. There’s a Dutch magazine called Panorama that intelligently combines horrific stories of abductions, murders and other shocking events with photo’s of sexy women, because they understand the physical excitement of reading about others’ misery is very much like physical arousal. I don’t necessarily believe this is wrong, but we need to draw the line when our perving becomes harmful to others.

“But didn’t you hear about this girl in Berlin the other day? She had been trafficked when she was only 11 years old, in her first year alone she was raped by up to 12 men a day. She was rarely allowed to shower and would have sperm in and on her as she slept. They raped her with huge objects too, sometimes even..”
“Look I understand, but criminalisation of adult sex work would not have helped her. Sex workers’ rights actually….”
“Did you not hear me? Three penisses! At the same time! They’d rape her as she was crying just imagine the sperm and…”

Not okay. Fetishists are hard to reach because they are so caught up in their perverted fantasies of powerful men, global gangs and white, young, innocent women who are shipped around and abused daily. When confronted with facts they simply start repeating their detailed fictional sex stories. They stalk the Red Lights District and ask prostitutes inappropriate questions about their sex life. You can often see them become a bit flushed, red moist lips slightly parted, a feverish look in their eyes. It freaks me out. Don’t involve me in your sexuality without my consent please. And don’t deny sex workers their rights because the idea that they are forced turns you on.

The Fantasist

The Fantasist is the less pervy version of the fetishists. It’s those people who will tell such obviously falls stories that you have to wonder if they believe it. They get something out of their myths of bad men and powerless girls, and seem to have somewhat lost touch with reality. They ‘cherry pick’ research to find upsetting details, repeat the most gruesome stories, get angry when confronted with more nuanced views, ignore actual sex workers and quote statistics that logically cannot be true. But even after you’ve explained that it’s not possible that three million young girls are trafficked each year, the average age of entry into prostitution is 13 and average age of death 32, even after you show them the basic math, they go “lalalala” and continue repeating it. The myth means too much to them.

They are different from the fetishist in that they don’t seem to be creaming their panties as they’re talking, but they often do get that feverish look in their eyes. It’s like talking to someone who has lost themselves in fearful extremist religion, or with some other very strange belief like thinking they can move objects with their mind. The fact that nothing is moving just does not register. Facts do not come through.

I was a bit shocked to see Renate v/d Zee embarrass herself on television by quoting obviously false statistics, but even more shocked when I realised that she had indeed read these reports, read all these findings that contradict her beliefs, and then managed to not let it sink in but instead completely reverse the findings in her head, and then quote those on national television as if she didn’t realise she had twisted it all around. That’s scary.

The Fundie Anti’s

The Fundie Anti opposes sex work because of an understanding of how the sex industry works. They are different from the Neutrals in that they sometimes know quite a lot about prostitution, but interpret this information within a theoretical framework in which sex work is wrong by definition.

The Sexist Fundie believes that no woman could possibly want to do sex work, that male sexuality in inherently aggressive and that we need laws to restrict this violence. More often than not the reasoning is quite childish (“I’m a woman and don’t want to do sex work so no woman would want to do sex work”) and contains hateful assumptions about men (“you know how they are, they just want a hole to dump their seed in, they don’t care“). These are the Anti’s who will claim that there is in fact a big market for crying malnourished sex slaves, because obviously men don’t care about the women they fuck as long as they get to fuck her.

The Religious Fundie believes that sex work goes against God’s devine will. Prostitution is not how God intended sexuality to be like. A woman should value her sexual ‘purity’ and only give away her sex to a man who will pay her in the desired currency: love and commitment, not money. Religious Fundies usually seem to mean somewhat well – they truly believe it is naturally harmful for a woman to have sex outside of a committed relationship and socially harmful in that no man would want a ‘used’ woman so what will her future be like without a husband and kids, and isn’t that what every woman desires? Other Religious Fundies become vile and wish to punish those dirty, disobedient whores. Punish them until they submit to my, I mean God’s will! The male Religious Fundie Anti will sometimes let truly medieval statements slip: “do we wish to allow our women to prostitute themselves? Is that what we want for our daughters and wives?”.

The Marxist/RadFem Fundie believes prostitution must be understood within a context of various forms of oppression. I actually find this line of thinking quite interesting, although I have to admit that I don’t know enough to give a good summary of their beliefs and would urge readers to research more before judging. I’m discussing the two together because they have many similarities, but I understand there are differences. According to the Marxist/RadFem the practice of the selling of sex is a result of the systematic oppression of women within a capitalist society, intersecting with other forms of opression. According to them, in an egalitarian society sex work would not exist. These Anti’s are often in favour of the Swedish/Nordic Model (criminalising the clients of sex workers). The oppressed should not be punished for their oppression, they say, instead the oppressor must be stopped from oppressing: men should be stopped from exploiting women by buying sex from them.

These are caricatures, I understand. But I think it helps to know who you’re arguing with. The Idealists and Bad Guys are often lost causes, but the Neutrals can be reasoned with. Information and visibility help with that. Sex workers and their allies are winning the fight for prostitutes’ rights and safety, not even Anti’s can stop that.

It often seems that people who oppose things like sex education, birth control, equal rights for gay people and decriminalised sex work just want to make sure that no act of pleasure goes unpunished. We can’t have kids get easy access to condoms because good Lord they might think to use them. We can’t have women selling sexual services without someone being punished because that might send the message that’s it’s fine for two consenting adults to have sex for their own reasons. We can’t provide contraceptives because people might start to believe that you can just have sex and “we’ll have you covered“.

(Read that link by the way because omg Dan Savage yes)

It’s about the punishment of sex.

I wonder how we can change our cultural attitude towards sex. Because for me, sexual rights are not just about human rights and individual freedoms. Our attitude towards our bodies, our pleasure, our nature seems deeply disordered to me. Sex is good for us. Pleasure is good for us. Punishment is not. How wonderful would it be if we celebrated sexuality as a positive aspect of life, if we encouraged all forms of consensual pleasure and intimacy? The world would be a better place if we had more sex :).

I think torturing animals is wrong. I believe people who intentionally torture animals should be punished, that keeping animals means you have to take responsibility for their wellbeing and that animals deserve to have some quality of life. I have a big problem with the way our culture treats animals in factory farming. I’m not opposed to killing animals for our pleasure, I don’t think it’s wrong to keep animals as property, but I think we’re crossing a line when their wellbeing is no longer of any concern at all. Animal cruelty is horrible.

But I don’t think I need an animal’s consent to do things to it. I keep my cat as a pet without asking him if he wanted to stay with me, and if he walked away I’d find him and bring him home because he’s chipped. I had his balls removed without his consent. If I kicked him for fun or cracked his little skull for kicks I should be arrested, if I stopped feeding him that’s abuse, but really there is not a relationship of trust and consent between Poes and I. And there shouldn’t have to be. You can do stuff to animals, just keep their wellbeing in mind and don’t torture them.

So that’s why I have no problem with sex with animals.

I mean sure, if you rape a little bunny that’s wrong. It would be equally wrong if you stuck a big stick up its ear, because you are hurting it. Well yes if you kill it you’re hurting it too, and I have eaten rabbits for my pleasure, but still, don’t do that.

Sexual relationships with animals that don’t involve hurting or killing it? I just don’t see the problem. I don’t care if the animal wants it – I’m quite sure my burger didn’t dream of becoming a burger and that does not matter to me, I’m a recreational meat eater and eat burgers purely for my pleasure. I don’t care if it’s natural – keeping a blog isn’t natural either and I don’t consider that morally wrong. By the way, I once saw a dog face-fuck a three-year-old and when I was little my bunny nearly died when her father raped her little head so hard she could hardly breathe so don’t talk to me about natural. And last but not least: animals are pretty good at expressing themselves so I fear more for the human’s safety!

Our relationship with sex is so messed up. We jerk off cattle to use their sperm for breeding, put our hand and arm up animals’ backsides for all sorts of reasons, but do it for sexual pleasure and everyone loses their minds. We allow pig-bukkake where the sow gets such an overload of sperm her womb gets infected, but come on a cows head and suddenly you’re a criminal.

Sex with animals is NOT illegal in the Netherlands, except when you do it for sexual pleasure. I’m not making this stuff up. You can do anything you want, put your body parts up anything and touch whatever you like, as long as it’s not because it turns you on. Because that would make you a pervert, and perverts are baaaaaad.

Marijke Vonk is a Dutch sex-positive psychologist specialised in working with sexual minorities. Besides working as a therapist, she is a writer and lecturer on various topics concerning sexuality. Main topics on this blog include kink, gender equality, sex workers' rights, non-monogamy and psychology.